US, UK intelligence
insufficient: BlixLondon, December 20
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said today that the USA and the UK were not giving him enough intelligence for his weapons search in Iraq.
“The most important thing that governments like the UK or the USA could give us would be to tell us of sites where they are convinced that they keep some weapons of mass destruction.

Two killed in Gaza violenceGaza, December 20
Israeli troops raided a town in the Gaza Strip, killing a gunman, and Palestinian militants shot dead an Israeli near a block of Jewish settlements today as W Asia peace negotiators prepared to meet in Washington.

FBI men present during raid: Pak ministerIslamabad, December 20
Pakistan today admitted the presence of FBI personnel during a raid at the residence of a Lahore-based doctor who, along with eight of his family members, was taken into custody for suspected links with the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

Friends and
members of family protest against the arrest of nine persons at
Mananwan village near Lahore on Thursday as part of the ongoing hunt
for members of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida network, officials said.
The suspected militants included two Americans and a Canadian, all
of Pakistani origin.
— Reuters photo

Beverly Hills, December 20
“Chicago” received a leading eight Golden Globe nominations yesterday, including best musical or comedy and best actress for stars Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

James Gandolfini and Edie Falco, both nominated for Golden Globes awards for best actor and best actress for a television drama series, appear in a scene from Home Box Office's "The Sopranos."
— AP/PTI photo

Russia destroys mustard gasMoscow, December 20
Russia has destroyed close to a tonne of mustard gas in a new facility built to help eliminate the country’s huge arsenal of chemical weapons, the Russian Munitions Agency said today.

A visitor to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney
on Friday strikes an unusual pose while viewing a life-like sculpture by artist Ron Mueck. The sculpture, made from a fibre-glass resin, is a self-portrait of the artist sleeping and is part of Mueck's first Australian exhibition of his
"hyper-real" figures, which will be exhibited in London early next year.
— Reuters

WTC benefits: 2 charged with fraudNew York, December 20
Two men have been charged with cheating government and private relief agencies of nearly $ 350,000 by claiming their offices were destroyed in the World Trade Center attack — even though they had moved out two years earlier.

Terrorists were ‘planning attacks’Paris, December 20
Four self-confessed Islamic militants arrested in France were planning “one or several” terrorist attacks in the near future, the Interior Ministry said today.

Afghan dies in attack on NGOKabul, December 20
An Afghan employee of a French non-governmental organisation died of wounds received during a grenade attack on a base of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul, a spokesman for the peacekeepers said today.

London, December 20
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix said today that the USA and the UK were not giving him enough intelligence for his weapons search in Iraq.

“The most important thing that governments like the UK or the USA could give us would be to tell us of sites where they are convinced that they keep some weapons of mass destruction. This is what we want to have,” he told BBC Radio.

Meanwhile, the UK will seek the UN’s explicit approval for war on Iraq in a second resolution at the end of January if arms inspections show President Saddam Hussein in breach of the UN demands, The Times reported today.

The daily said the decision emerged after the USA yesterday declared Iraq in material breach of its UN weapons obligations because it had flouted the Security Council resolution 1441 through omissions in its arms declaration.

The reason for UK’s keenness for a second UN resolution was that it wanted to obtain full international backing for military action to disarm Iraq, and it was confident it could obtain one, The Times said.

Government sources told the paper that the US administration would go along with the UK plan so long as it believed a new resolution would be approved.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tony Blair told the Left-wing Guardian daily in an interview that the USA, UK and other members of the UN Security Council would decide the seriousness of Saddam’s breaches of UN resolution 1441 and not the UN inspection team.

WASHINGTON: A federal grand jury has inducted 12 persons on money-laundering charges for allegedly helping to funnel more than $12 million to Iraq in violation of a decade-old US embargo, the government has said.

US Customs Service Commissioner Robert Bonner announced the action as a federal indictment was unsealed on Thursday in a federal court in Washington state. Mr Bonner said the indictment was handed down on Wednesday.

Investigators say money was sent from US cities, including New York and Seattle, and then on to Britain, India, Canada, Brazil, Taiwan, Egypt, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates.
Reuters, AFP, AP

Gaza, December 20
Israeli troops raided a town in the Gaza Strip, killing a gunman, and Palestinian militants shot dead an Israeli near a block of Jewish settlements today as W Asia peace negotiators prepared to meet in Washington.

On the Israeli political front opinion poll in Israel’s two biggest newspapers showed a corruption scandal had weakened Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s Likud Party in the January 28 general election race.

But the surveys indicated the Right-wing Likud Party was still on course to lead the next government.

The Israeli election looked likely to delay efforts by the quartet of W. Asia mediators to finalise a peace plan to help end more than two years of Israeli-Palestinian bloodshed.

The quartet - the USA, the European Union, Russia and the UN - meets in Washington today with the USA in favour of honouring an Israeli request to go slow on the plan until the elections.

Palestinians are also scheduled to vote in a presidential and legislative election on January 20, which Mr Yasser Arafat called following international and domestic pressure for reform.

But the Palestinian central election committee formally recommended today that Mr Arafat delay the ballot, citing the difficulty of holding it while the Israeli forces remained in cities re-occupied after suicide attacks in Israel.

In new violence today the troops raided the town of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip and demolished several homes.

Witnesses said Majdi Moussa, a gunman who shot at the soldiers, was killed. Hospital officials said seven other persons were wounded in the exchange of fire.

Hours after the raid Palestinian gunmen fired at an Israeli vehicle near the Gush Katif block of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip. Israeli military sources said one Israeli was killed. A spokesman said the victim was a settler.

The militant Islamic Jehad group claimed responsibility.

In Deir al-Balah the Israeli forces blew up, in controlled explosions, the homes of three terrorists.
Reuters

Islamabad, December 20
Pakistan today admitted the presence of FBI personnel during a raid at the residence of a Lahore-based doctor who, along with eight of his family members, was taken into custody for suspected links with the Taliban and Al-Qaida.

“The government has already admitted that 12 FBI men are present in Pakistan. It is not necessary that they were spearheading the raid. It is the Pakistani police which is on the forefront,” Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said.

It was on the basis of information given by the FBI men that such operations were conducted but it is totally wrong that they were in the forefront in operation held in Lahore, he told the BBC here.

Asked what made them suspect that the persons arrested in Lahore were Al-Qaida men, the minister said when some foreign nationals were seen in a village and their activities seemed suspicious, the villagers informed the authorities concerned .

Beverly Hills, December 20
“Chicago” received a leading eight Golden Globe nominations yesterday, including best musical or comedy and best actress for stars Renee Zellweger and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

“The Hours,” a three-tiered story about women whose lives are linked to a novel by Virginia Woolf, had seven nominations including best film drama, best actress for Nicole Kidman and supporting actor for Ed Harris.

The comedy of in-jokes, “Adaptation,” about its own writers’ attempts to fashion its screenplay, had six mentions including best musical or comedy, screenplay by Charlie Kaufman and best comedy actor for Nicolas Cage.

Nominees in 13 movies and 11 television categories for the 60th annual Golden Globes were announced by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. The awards are regarded by some as indicators of front-runners for the Academy Award nominations in February.

The Globes will be awarded on January 19.

Besides “The Hours,” the best film drama contenders were the bittersweet Jack Nicholson road-trip saga “About Schmidt,” director Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York,” the fantasy sequel “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” and Roman Polanski’s Nazi escape story “The Pianist.”

Along with “Adaptation” and “Chicago,” the Charles Dickens classic “Nicholas Nickleby,” the Hugh Grant redemption comedy “About a Boy” and the crowd-pleasing blockbuster “My Big Fa Greek Wedding” will compete for best musical or comedy.
AP

Moscow, December 20
Russia has destroyed close to a tonne of mustard gas in a new facility built to help eliminate the country’s huge arsenal of chemical weapons, the Russian Munitions Agency said today.

It was the first consignment of chemical weapons to be destroyed at the facility in Gorny in the Volga river region of Saratov, about 700 km southeast of Moscow, which began operating this week.

Munitions Agency spokesman Dmitry Timashkov said 840 kg of the gas had been destroyed at the plant yesterday. The operation was monitored by international inspectors.

Russia has been trying to convince other nations of the seriousness of its efforts to liquidate its 40,000 tonnes of arsenal of chemical weapons, the largest in the world. The program was long delayed due to lack of funding from the Russian Government and some disarmament partners, including the USA, who have suspended promised funding in hopes of spurring Moscow to action.
AP

New York, December 20
Two men have been charged with cheating government and private relief agencies of nearly $ 350,000 by claiming their offices were destroyed in the World Trade Center attack — even though they had moved out two years earlier.

Alexander Koltovskoy, 36, and Vincent M. Pizzi III, 48, were charged in the federal court with stealing from seven government agencies or related groups, including $ 228,000 from the Small Business Administration and $ 28,000 from the American Red Cross.

The men pleaded innocent and were released after posting bail, $ 100,000 for Koltovskoy, $25,000 for Pizzi.
AP

Paris, December 20
Four self-confessed Islamic militants arrested in France were planning “one or several” terrorist attacks in the near future, the Interior Ministry said today.

The ministry said two of the four suspects told investigators they received training in the Pankisi Gorge, a remote region in Georgia that borders Chechnya, and had met Chechen rebel leaders. The four were arrested on Monday in a Paris suburb.
AP

Kabul, December 20
An Afghan employee of a French non-governmental organisation died of wounds received during a grenade attack on a base of the international peacekeeping force in Kabul, a spokesman for the peacekeepers said today.

The attacker also died and two French journalists working for the Paris-based NGO Aina were wounded when a grenade was thrown yesterday at Camp Warehouse, one of the main bases of the International Security Assistance Force.
Reuters

GLOBAL
MONITOR

Mexican pop singer Gloria Trevi waves to photographers as she holds her son Angel Gabriel before her extradition from Brazil on Thursday. Trevi and her former manager Sergio Andrade were arrested on January 13, 2000, in Rio de Janeiro on charges of sexual abuse.
— Reuters photo

MEXICAN STAR EXTRADITED
BRASILIA: Declaring her innocence, Mexican pop star Gloria Trevi late last night began her extradition journey to her native country to face charges of sexually abusing minors. The jailed star had been seeking refugee status in Brazil, which was denied, and fighting Mexico’s request for extradition. Mexican authorities want to prosecute Trevi — known for wild hairstyles and costumes, in-your-face attitude and once considered Mexico’s answer to Madonna — along with her manager and ex-lover, Sergio Andrade and backup singer Maria Raquenel Portillo, on charges they sexually abused minors.
AFP

RIGHTS GROUPS SLAM US LAW
LOS ANGELES: US civil rights groups and Muslim leaders have slammed a new US anti-terrorism measure under which West Asians are forced to register with the authorities and be fingerprinted. They called on Washington to scrap the “flawed and misguided” programme aimed at men from the West Asia, North Africa and North Korea following the arrest of scores of immigrants who turned up to register under the new rules.
AP

2 HELD FOR SUSPECTED TERROR LINKS
KUALA LUMPUR: The Malaysian police has arrested two suspected members of the regional Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terror organisation in the Sabah state on Borneo island and warned of more arrests, an official spokesperson said on Friday. Security officers detained the two Indonesian men, who have been residing in Malaysia for several years now, in a pre-dawn operation on Thursday, said a senior officer from the special branch forces, which handles the country’s internal security issues.
DPA

ANOTHER NIGHTCLUB SET ON FIRE
MOMBASA: Arsonists set fire to a popular nightclub in Kenya’s Indian Ocean city of Mombasa on Friday, partially destroying it, only two days after a similar attack on another European-owned nightspot, police sources said. The Mamba discotheque, an international nightclub exclusively owned by an Austrian national, was attacked at around 12:40 am. “One of the workers noticed smoke in the disco hall, when everybody had left. They tried to put it out, but it quickly spread to the palm leaves-thatched roof,” Mombasa police chief Gerald Oluoch said from Mombasa.
AFP

PAK
TIT-BITS

ULTRA LINKED TO PEARL MURDER
KILLED
KARACHI: A Pakistani with suspected links to al-Qaida and the murder of US journalist Daniel Pearl is believed to have been killed in a blast at an explosives warehouse here, police sources said here on Friday. According to authorities, Asif Ramzi, who was on Pakistan’s most wanted list, died on Thursday in an explosion that killed at least three other persons.
AFP

MAN GETS LIFE TERM FOR BLASPHEMY
MULTAN: A court in Pakistan sentenced a man to life in prison for blasphemy after he admitted being a disciple of a self-declared prophet who died in police custody, a court official said on Friday. Defendant Mohammed Ahsanullah (30), was found guilty this week in a court in Faisalabad, 280 km north-east of Multan. He was given two life sentences.
AP